Celebrity Smackdown 4

Celebrity Smackdown 4 was one of those games you'd find buried in a Flash portal during the late 2000s. It didn't take itself seriously, and that was the point. You were there to hit famous people, a simple premise that fit right into the era's appetite for quick, cathartic browser games.

You control a floating fist with your mouse, directing it around the screen to punch a parade of celebrities. The main objective is to deplete each character's health bar before the timer runs out. You click to throw jabs, and holding the mouse button charges a more powerful swing. Some targets move or fight back with their own weak attacks, forcing you to dodge and time your strikes. The pacing is fast, with new faces appearing quickly, and the difficulty comes from their increasing speed and resilience. It feels like a silly, stress-relieving exercise in controlled chaos.